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Citation
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Robles O, Bruce J, Atkinson HG, Buscher D, Scriven K, Bart KK, French S. Ann. Glob. Health 2015; 81(3): 331-332. |
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Abstract
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For too many girls worldwide, an emergency begins as an "event" and transforms into a lifetime.
The adolescent girl is already at a triple disadvantage pre-emergency: her age, her sex, and her economic status all put her at risk. Her thin (or absent) friendship network, fragile access to safe public space, and tenuous claim on schooling are further strained or erased by displacement. Girls are maltreated and exploited, even before childbearing age; puberty dramatically elevates their risk for sexual violence, pregnancy, and HIV infection. Many bear or inherit children while still children themselves. Social norms travel with the girl, generating a paradox: Girls are controlled under the guise of protection while their rights are violated and their goodwill and capacities are drawn on to mitigate scarcities and family trauma.
In the severest moments of an emergency, adolescent girls function as a default safety net or virtual credit card. A girl's assets--labor, time, integrity, and safety--can be deployed to underwrite the risks and to "smooth" others' material needs. She is the last to access survival resources, but the first expected to provide; she actively seeks out food, fuel, and water for her family. She may be encouraged or driven by circumstances to trade sex for goods or money; she may be forced into child marriages or short-term sexual liaisons for which her family (and intermediaries) receives money. Her lack of education undermines her own ability to obtain accurate information, discern dangers, or define realistic choices. Without a place to meet other girls and develop her voice and agency, she may doubt her abilities or blame herself for her circumstances. Sexual access to girls, promoted or simply not prevented, is not only a human rights abuse but an injustice that extends her crisis, whether through life-crippling pregnancies or disease (HIV, other sexually transmitted infections, and now, Ebola).
he Girls in Emergencies (GIE) Collaborative--a group representing several major emergency response organizations--focuses on the adolescent girl because evidence reveals that she not only faces a multiplicity of risks during a crisis, but also because she remains invisible, unprotected, and unengaged, particularly in the crucial first 45 days of a crisis. Current practice lags behind field realities. To the extent that we identified "good practices," these are small in scale and implemented too late....
Language: en |